Things to do in London this weekend (21-22 February)

Giddy up, horoscope fans! In 2026, we’re cantering right into the Year of the Horse. Like a cobra shedding its skin, we are slivering away from 2025’s Year of the Snake and into a brand new era. The Year of the Horse symbolises victorious success and good fortune, which is something we all need a bit of right now. Of course, the new year isn't just celebrated in Chinese culture. Also known as the Lunar New Year, the Spring Festival, Tet and Seollal, it’s celebrated across many more countries in South Asia. This year it falls on Tuesday February 17, but the evets for it will be carrying on into the weekend with foodie markets to craft workshops, here are the best to look out for. 

Perfect pancakes are a Shrove Tuesday standard, but what if you can’t be bothered to FIY (flip it yourself)? Eat out, of course. Don't know where to go for your edible disc of battered joy? Well, we do, and have rounded up the best places for pancakes in London. There’s also way more to these carb-tastic delights than sugar and lemon. From American-style delights at brunch with bacon on the side, to decadent cherry-studded crêpes for dessert, and Chinese streetfood snack jianbing, these are the finest pancakes in town – for the big day and through into the weekend. 

Terence Rattigan’s Man and Boy is a truly extraordinary revival. Anthony Lau’s production is the first Rattigan we’ve seen that throws off the shackles of naturalism. Here, Rattigan joins Shakespeare, Chekhov, Ibsen et al in being deemed a playwright whose work can be given a batshit staging and still stand tall. Staged in the round, designer Georgia Lowe’s distinctly Brechtian, wilfully anachronistic set, it liberates star Ben Daniels from period constraints, freeing him up to deliver what is easily the best stage performance of the year to date. He plays Gregor Antonescu, a Machiavellian Romanian-born financier who on the cusp of triggering a fresh financial crash. It’s an extraordinary couple of hours of theatre, the performance of the year wrapped up in a wild production that tears up everything we thought we knew about how to stage good old Terence Rattigan.

Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota will bring her mesmirising web-like installation to the Hayward in her first major London solo show. Floor-to-ceiling woven artworks will take over the gallery, engulfing ordinary objects – such as shoes, keys, beds, chairs and dresses – within the huge structures. These will be accompanied by new large-scale sculptures, drawings, early performance videos and photographs. 

Many restaurants proffer a ‘shop local’ ethos, but Dockley Road Kitchen – a new eatery attached to Bermondsey’s produce market Spa Terminus – has taken it one step further. Helmed by former St John chef Emily Chia, with Klaudia Weisz and Alex Keys, ex of Rochelle Canteen, the trio is joined by Spa Terminus’ resident meat supplier, Farmer Tom Jones. It has a genuine ethos that really works: make great food with great ingredients from trusted people that you want to work with. The menu is a small but perfectly formed selection of plates designed for sharing. Eighty per cent of the menu is sourced from local traders. It’s a good vibes place. The staff are lovely; the mood is great; the food wants you to have a nice time. 

Emily Brontë’s only published novel has always been utterly batshit, and director Emerald Fennell’s take on the gothic ‘romance’ of Wuthering Heights follows suit. The destructive aspect of Cathy and Heathcliff’s obsessive love is front and centre. Fennell makes those wild moors howl with passion, and when it comes to interiors, Linton’s house seems imagined by Kubrick on a dose of Yorkshire’s finest shrooms. Those here for Brontë Behaving Badly will get their kicks largely from Heathcliff’s pivot to perversion in the film’s third act. 

Dealing with the little ones for a week in the middle of what is arguably the bleakest month of the year is always a bit of a shock to the system. But fear not! By way of acknowledgement of all this London really steps up with the indoor activities challenge, with the annual Imagine festival at the Southbank Centre, as ever leading the way for a week in which there’s, in fact, plenty to do. Read on for our top tips. Here’s our roundup of all the best things to do with your children this February half-term.

This year’s New Contemporaries exhibition, a showcase of 26 of the UK’s finest emerging artists, includes themes of – and you may want to take a breath here – dystopian futures, the climate crisis, industrialisation, gentrification, displacement, critical approaches to systems of power, digital technologies, mourning, remembrance, and loss. Among others!

Veteran director Richard Eyre’s new adaptation of August Strindberg’s The Dance of Death brings another bunch of weighty actors to perform a thoughtful revival of a classic drama in The Orange Tree Theatre’s intimate in-the-round space. Alice (Lisa Dillon) and Edgar (Will Keen) have been trapped together for nearly 25 years on a military outpost off the coast of Sweden. They loathe everyone on the island, especially each other. Then one stormy night, a potential bombshell arrives in the form of Kurt (Geoffrey Streatfeild). Will he rescue Alice? Team up with Edgar? Or merely be the enabler for yet more sadistic cat-and-mouse games? Eyre’s sweary, funny adaptation of Strindberg’s play makes the most of the biting humour. It’s bitterly funny but also narrow and claustrophobic.

Somerset House’s next outdoor large-scale comission will be created by German-Scottish artist and researcher Dana-Fiona Armour. Serpentine Currents will feature large-scale serpentine structures derived from 3D scans of endangered sea snake specimens, illuminated by light patterns triggered by oceanographic data, addressing the looming threat of marine ecosystem collapse. Cheerful stuff!

No matter how powerful or pampered, celebrities are still human. They have their own foibles and panic attacks. So we all feel it when Charli xcx’s looks are mercilessly savaged in Aidan Zamiri’s anarchically absurdist mockumentary, The Moment, in which Charli escapes to Ibiza for a few days to get away from the fractious implosion of her Brat concert movie, being shot in a pigeon-infested warehouse in East London. A blistering take-down of the social media-driven celebrity culture, The Moment combines the anxiety-inducing mayhem of If I Had Legs I’d Kick You and the omnishambles clusterfuck of The Thick of It. Charli’s willingness to piss-take herself is admirable. 

One hundred years ago, a strange curtained box appeared on Broadway in New York City. If you went inside and slotted in 25 cents, you’d emerge with eight sepia-tinted photos of yourself in a matter of minutes. It was the Photomaton – the world’s first fully automated photobooth. Fast forward to the 21st century and photobooths are in bars, train stations, cinemas, record shops and on streets all over the world. The Photographer’s Gallery is marking a century of the machines with Click!, an archival exhibition exploring their imperfections, their quirks and their most famous fans. Naturally, there’ll be a working photobooth for visitors to take their own snap.

For 24 years, Kinoteka has been highlighting the creativity and magic of Polish cinema in London, taking over some of the most-respected cinema locations with offerings from the Slavic country. This year will be no different so get down to the likes of BFI Southbank, the ICA and more to discover some new cinematic treasures. The festival has a tradition of putting on retrospectives of great Polish directors, and in 2026 it’s the turn of Andrzej Wajdas. The opening gala on February 4 will show Wajdas's classic 1958 film Ashes and Diamonds from a 35mm print, and there’ll be Q&As, talks and an exhibition celebrating him in the following weeks. Other programme highlights include the UK premiere Agnieszka Holland's Kafka biopic Franz at BFI IMAX, a screening of The Good Boy starring Stephen Graham and Andrea Riseborough from Corpus Christi director Jan Komasa and a showing of award-winning documentary Trains from Maciej J. Drygas. 

Sweetmeats, from writer Karim Khan and director Natasha Kathi-Chandra, offers a love story about the older generation – slow-burning and cocooned in domestic simplicity. Two widowers, Hema (Shobu Kapoor) and Liaquat (Rehan Sheikh), meet at a Type 2 diabetes management course. It’s hardly a classic meet-cute, but it’s a plausible one. As with most romances, they begin by bickering. It has something resonant to say about forgotten generations and their desires, about the cultural specificities that connect and nourish, and about intergenerational families at a stage of life we rarely see onstage. It’s not glamorous, but it’s very sweet.

The NPG will be the UK’s first museum to stage an exhibition focussing on Lucain Freud’s works on paper, including some artworks seen on display for the first time. Focussing on Freud’s mastery of drawing in all forms, Drawing into Painting will look at the artist’s lifelong preoccupation with the human face and figure, from the 1930s to the early 21st century.

A series of immersive and beguiling installations, kinetic sculptures, interactive machines and large projections explore the relationship between the human body and machine at this landmark dance exhibition, highlighting the work of virtuoso choreographer Wayne McGregor. Looking at how choreography can be augmented and created through AI, machine learning, motion capture and more, tech nerds and ballet lovers alike will adore this mesmeric exhibition. Virtually every work on show at Infinite Bodies is worth stopping at and lingering over for a while.

See the grand interiors of St Martin-in-the-Fields transform into a starry wonderland at this dazzling art installation. Artist and sculptor Peter Walker of Luxmuralis is back at the Trafalgar Square church for a second year, ready to treat audiences to an immersive display of lights, colours and sounds. The experience lasts from between 30 minutes and an hour, during which you'll be transported from the Big Bang through the history of space exploration. There's also a star-filled silent disco in the crypt below, if you want even more galactic magic. 

Tom Stoppard’s 1993 masterpiece is a work of burning, ravenous intelligence, and almost universally acknowledged as his best work. It’s a play about the unpredictability of humanity, how we’re defined by our transience, our sex drives, and our desire to understand. Carrie Cracknell’s revival is not an attempt to radically reconfigure Arcadia. She and her team - notably designer Alex Eales - have leaned nicely into the Old Vic’s current in-the-round configuration with a revolving circular stage that neatly encapsulates the underlying sense of cosmic wonder that underpins it all. Arcadia is a perfect play, which means there’s a lot less wiggle room for a director to impose themselves. It’s also unforgiving to actors. Cracknell gives it a nice air of intimacy and avoids having her cast speechify Stoppard’s ornate prose.

Miriam Battye’s comedy The Virgins is set in an unremarkable house, with a corridor in the middle. With Joel (Ragevan Vasan), his mate Mel (Alec Boaden), and his teenage sister Chloe (Anushka Chakravarti) and her friends Jess (Alla Bruccoleri) and Phoebe (Molly Hewitt-Richards), who are getting ready for a big night out as it opens. The boys are not the focus here. The girls – clever, wordy, neurotic, virgins – are painstakingly crafting a plan to go out and get… snogged. They are smart and irrational, sweet and maddening as they try to naively micromanage their journey to adulthood. It’s a fine play: funny, concise, stacked with rising talent. And very accessible: Battye has written a lot for TV and it shows, in a good way. 

Between 1885 and 1890, OG Neo-Impressionist Georges Seurat spent five summers observing the port towns along the northern coast of France, capturing impressive seascapes, regattas and other oceanic activities. Twenty three of these paintings, oil sketches and drawings are to be showcased at the Courtauld from February next year, offering a nautical insight into this elusive French artist. The exhibition will borrow works from world-class galleries including MOMA and the Musée d’Orsay, making it even more worth the peek.

The Princess of Wales Conservatory at Kew Gardens is taking a voyage to China this February, courtesy of the latest annual mind-bending orchid display that takes over the iconic glasshouse each year. As ever, the exotic display will celebrate the natural beauty and biodiversity of its subject country: China is home to thousands of varieties of orchid, plus vast amounts of other flora and fauna besides. Look out for sculptures of dragons and Chinese lanterns, as well as intricately woven plant installations. There’ll also be ticketed after-hours events with live Chinese music, food, cocktails and dance performances. 

The far right on the streets, an agenda-filled press and a nation caught in a cost-of-living crisis being encouraged to blame immigrants for its woes. It’s not hard to see why this new musical – set in the lead-up to and aftermath of the real-life 1936 stand against the march of Oswald Mosley’s black-shirt fascists by the residents of Cable Street in London’s East End – resonates so powerfully now. Told in flashback via a present-day tour of Cable Street, it follows the fatefully linked lives of Irish Mairead and Jewish ex-boxer Sammy. Its clear-sighted sense of the high stakes of history is what makes it so deeply moving.

The landmark exhibition at the British Museum will trace the evolution of the Japanese warrior class over the past 1,000 years, exploring how their image came to be what it is today. From the medieval period to the present day, this major exhibit will bring together 280 objects to illustrate how the Samurai came to be known as armour-clad warriors, fighting epic duels, and following a strict code of honour. But it will also explore how ideas of Samurai have been fabricated, idealised and adapted, dispelling the myths and revealing their true history. 

Tim Crouch’s new production of The Tempest might baffle a lot of people, but I doubt any of them will forget it in a hurry. We’re in a junk-cluttered study of some sort, presumably on the nameless island that Crouch’s Prospero and his daughter Miranda (Sophie Steer) were exiled to by his sister Antonia (a gender swap, obvs). Their unearthly servants Caliban and Ariel are there too. They appear to be acting out The Tempest. That is to say, they’re using objects in the study to recreate the usual start of the play. It’s a leftfield but fun read. After a while, Crouch’s Prospero starts summoning audience members (planted actors, not unwitting audience participants, don’t worry) to fill the roles. It’s a cerebral and uncompromising – but pretty funny! – Tempest from a director who has devoted his life to deconstructing the nature of theatre. 

In the Barbican exhibition series ‘Encounters: Giacometti’, living artists will showcase their art in response to the esteemed work of Alberto Giacometti, who passed away in 1966. The upcoming and final sculptor that will be in discussion with Giacometti will be American artist Lynda Benglis. She will present new and old pieces and her personal selection of Giacometti’s sculptures. Known for pouring hot pigmated latex onto the floor and letting it form into a solid structure, Benglis’ work is often colourful, abstract, and holds a mirror to society. 

A new free photography exhibition illustrates the beauty and fragility of the Pantanal – the world’s largest wetland that sprawls across Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay. Over 60 images, captured by two of Brazil’s leading documentary photographers, will be displayed. Visitors will discover the Pantanal’s wonderful biodiversity – which includes jaguars, howler monkeys, caiman and marsh deer – alongside the ravages of wildfires and deforestation. 

High Noon is an adaptation of the classic allegorical 1952 movie starring Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly. It’s an impressive show in a lot of ways. Thea Sharrock’s direction deftly conjures a dusty desert town using flexible sets, lovely period costumes and some sparse but effective gun slingin’. It’s theatrical, too, in the sense that the cast sing a lot more Bruce Springsteen songs than they did in the film, and an ever-present clock implacably ticks down to the title time. And it’s got two sensational leads.

Brazillian multi-disciplinary artist Laura Lima brings her first London solo exhibition to the ICA. Known for her genre-defying practice that merges sculpture, performance, and living bodies, The Drawing Drawing will display a new interactive sculptural installation that riffs on the traditional life drawing class, with an anarchic take that blurs the line between audience and artwork. 

The Barbican is celebrating 20 years of comissioning artists for The Curve in 2026. Chicago-based artist Julia Phillips will be the first to exhibit in the free space this year, with her first UK solo exhibition Inside, Before They Speak. Showing new sculptures that combine glazed ceramics sculpted on her body with metal hardware, Phillips explores ideas about the body, conception, technology and human connection. 

In 1824, the young King Liholiho and Queen Kamāmalu travelled across oceans from their kingdom, Hawaiʻi, to seek an alliance with the British Crown. This winter British Museum will shine a light on the lesser-known story about the historical relationship between Hawaiʻi’ and the United Kingdom, showing artefacts and treasures created by Hawaiian makers of the past and present. You’ll be able to see everything from feathered cloaks worn by chiefs, to finely carved deities, powerful shark-toothed weapons, and bold contemporary works by Kānaka ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian) artists.